Girl who never wears make-up, gets made up

Do sparks fly when eyelid meets eye primer for the very first time? Does skin tone darken when brush meets skin? These and other questions answered by the undercover makeover mall fiend

Do sparks fly when eyelid meets eye primer for the very first time? Does skin tone darken when brush meets skin? These and other questions answered by the undercover makeover mall fiend

It wasn't quite a sting operation -- it was meant to be more of an expose, of the well-dressed nice-smelling mall rat who would enter high-end cosmetic stores and get herself a free make-up makeover. But taking photographs inside the mall, with guards watching your every move was the least worrisome part of the job. I had to pretend to be a mall rat interested in slipping into a glam avatar to get, as they say, the inside story.

And that was the scary part. Here's the thing -- I don't wear make-up. Most of the times, I don't even wear moisturiser. Let's just say it's a mixture of feminist ideology and laziness. The lady at the Canadian make-up brand store at a Lower Parel mallu00a0 that I chose for my undercover act, was a great salesperson, and looked impassive when I told her about the moisturiser, although I could have sworn I heard gasps from behind the beaded curtain at the far end of the tiny space covered wall-to-wall with bottles.
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But then, I quickly added, it was only because I simply couldn't find the right one to use, and would she please suggest one for a skin that's semi-dry and semi-oily with a T zone issue? She did, and with a proprietorial air, she sat me down in front of a long narrow mirror on a swivel chair that didn't move at all. Get serious, it seemed to admonish me, and I rearranged my face to look as impassive as I could.

As the saleslady -- also a trained make-up artiste, I learnt -- began to apply oil control moisturiser ("the perfect solution to your skin type") and dab foundation on one half of my face, she kept up a steady banter that centred around the dark circles beneath my eyes. "Are they always like that or is it like this only today?" she asked. I goggled a bit but collected my wits.

'I don't know, I've never really noticed,' wouldn't have made the cut, I realised. Besides, wouldn't mall rats know what their eyes looked like? Wouldn't that be why they visited make-up stores in the first place? I shrugged and sighed deeply. 'Those troublesome dark circles' it implied.

She nodded sympathetically. "I know just what to get you," she said, and promptly returned with a concealer that made the area under my eyes look less like pits.u00a0 As the saleslady worked on my face with diligence, she kept getting called away by customers looking for "that right shade of lipstick" or an eye shadow that "didn't collect, you know?" Many breezed in, tried out a few tester lip liners and walked out with equanimity. A father-daughter duo entered the shop, the former with a suspicious look on his face, and the latter, a shorts-wearing bubble gum-chewing teenager, looking like she was in her personal heaven.

Do you get a lot of people who come for a free makeover, I asked the saleslady, after she had tackled the teenager ("black eye shadow, like, now, please"), as she began to apply eye primer on my eyelid. "Look down," she instructed, and after a pause said, "Of course we do. So many of them."

"There's no link to their conversations. For instance, I'd have applied a foundation that is just right for their skin tone and they will say, 'it's not good enough, let me see some colour'," she said, pursing her lips. "It's not like our conversations," she added.

"See, this is perfect," she smiled five minutes later, asking me to open my eye, and see what a smouldering kohl pencil, black eye shadow and the right brush number could achieve over an eyelid covered with primer ("to smoothen the eye lid") and loose powder ("to set the primer"). "But then, I see it as a good practice session," she shrugged her shoulders.

It took me a while to figure out that she was talking about the mall rats -- and going by her superb deduction skills, I figured there was no point pretending to be one anymore. "How much are the kohl and eye shadow for?" I asked. "Please come to the counter," she chirped, with a successful smile.